A First Step Towards Automated Detection of Buffer Overrun Vulnerabilities.

TLDR

Static analysis can eliminate security bugs before deployment, whereas earlier hand audits missed vulnerabilities. The study introduces a new technique for detecting buffer overrun vulnerabilities in security‑critical C code. The approach formulates buffer overrun detection as an integer‑range analysis problem using static analysis. The prototype uncovered new remotely exploitable vulnerabilities in a large, widely deployed software package.

Abstract

We describe a new technique for finding potential buffer overrun vulnerabilities in security-critical C code. The key to success is to use static analysis: we formulate detection of buffer overruns as an integer range analysis problem. One major advantage of static analysis is that security bugs can be eliminated before code is deployed. We have implemented our design and used our prototype to find new remotely-exploitable vulnerabilities in a large, widely deployed software package. An earlier hand audit missed